revolving cutting-tool, supported on a traveling carriage, and having also a lateral movement on the carriage, an iron pattern, and the mechanism that controls the lateral play of the cutting-tool by contact with the pattern. The large drum below is also essential, because the cutting-tool is continually advancing along the lathe and its belt must follow it. On placing a piece of wood in the lathe and fitting to the machine the iron pattern of an axe-handle, last, or other irregular form, the cutting-tool begins to turn down the wood, advancing along the lathe from end to end. At the same time the follower, resting on the pattern, follows its shape exactly, and advances or draws back the cutting-tool in just those proportions that will

cause it to exactly reproduce the pattern in wood.

Here is an invention that sprang complete and finished from the imagination of one man. He simply thought it out in his own mind, made it, and it worked as he had seen in his mind that it would work. Thomas Blanchard was born on a farm, in Sutton, Massachusetts, June 24, 1788. The farm suggested nothing to him, and when at eighteen. years of age he took the tools of a mechanic, all he could find to do was the dreary work of putting the heads on tacks by hand. This was in his brother's shop in West Millbury. A dull and small beginning, yet it was the one thing needful-the right work. The shop awoke his sleeping genius, and within a few months from the time he learned to make tacks by hand he designed, made and put in operation a tack machine, and at once escaped from drudgery and discovered which way his talents and fortune lay. His most important invention was the stocking machine, or lathe for turning gun stocks, and now commonly known as the lathe for turning irregular forms. It has been greatly modified in form, yet its principal ideas still survive just as he designed it, just as he saw it in his mind before the first model. was made.

It may be said that the history of this invention offers small hope to the young reader, because Thomas Blanchard was an inventor born with a gift for his work. No doubt; yet the study of his life has other

lessons. When he sold his tack machine he bought tools and shut himself in his shop, and for two years never came out, except for rest. Two years' persistent work, with his own hands, on one idea, and spending upon

it all the money he had in the world. He escaped the severe poverty of Elias Howe, and yet knew something of the warfare that seems to follow the birth of new inventions. He fought a good fight for his ideas, and was sustained by the courts in his patents. His chief invention was regarded

LOOM OF LYALL.

FOUR WEB

as so great a benefit to the country, that his patent was renewed a third time by Congress, and only became public property about twenty years ago. He amassed considerable property from his inventions, and died in Boston, April 16, 1864.

American women have a notion that, in some way, one American man gave his inventive genius to the honorable cause of lightening the work of feminine fingers throughout the country. This half the nation looks to Elias Howe as the inventor of the machine for sewing fabrics, and perhaps scarcely observes another who has made some of these fabrics possible. Moreover, the feminine instinct has accepted with avidity new fabrics presented at all the stores that possess one quality never seen before in silks, cottons or linens. The enticing card, "Double width," lures the shopper as she buys the wide goods, without a thought that never before in the history of the world did any woman see such fabrics. Only the daughters of the generation just passing away ever made so wide the borders of their garments.

To understand this singular matter we must glance for a moment at the loom, a machine older than history, and a machine whose history links our own day and city, through France and England, with prehistoric times and peoples. The loom consists of the following essential parts: A frame, supporting at one end the yarnbeam or roller on which the warp threads are wound, and at the other the clothbeam, on which the finished fabric is wound as fast as formed. Between these is the harness system, a device by which the threads can be raised or lowered to

form the shed. In plain weaving, every alternate thread is raised, which leaves an opening across the sheet of threads called the shed, and through this shed is passed the shuttle carrying the weft yarn. After the shuttle passes, there is one other part used, the lay, that presses the weft thread into place next to the one preceding it. Weaving, undoubtedly, grew up from basket-making, and all these features of the loom have been known for many centuries. Some form of loom was used in China, India and Egypt long before the time of Joseph. The Egyptians credited its invention to Isis, for want of knowledge of its real inventor.

Observe the history of this grand and simple machine. It took its present shape before any records of such things were made. The muse of history was too busy recording the selfishness of kings to heed a machine that clothed the people. No essential change appeared till John Kay, of Bury, England invented the flying shuttle, in 1735. Up to that time all looms were hand-looms, that is, looms employing a shuttle that must be passed through the shed by hand. The flying shuttle was thrown through the loom by the mechanism invented by Kay, and called the picker staff. For thus reducing the labor of weaving one-half, Kay was driven from town to town by the blind fury of the English weavers, stupidly thinking their work injured by his invention, till he died at last in poverty and obscurity in France. At the same time these same weavers did not hesitate to use Kay's invention, even when he was half-starved in the streets of Paris.

The next step was the invention of the Jacquard attachment. Applied to the loom, it furnishes a means of controlling every warp thread, raising any number or group at a throw of the shuttle, and thus making it possible to weave any pattern, however complicated. Joseph Maria Jacquard was born in Lyons, France, in 1752, and made his great improvement in the loom in 1801. He died at Orleans, in 1834, and lived long enough to come nearer to the more peaceful days in the history of invention. He obtained many rewards and honors, yet when his first machine was made, the Lyonese workmen destroyed it in the streets of the city, and made every effort to suppress the invention and to injure the inventor.

These three, the unknown originator of the loom, John Kay and Joseph Maria Jacquard stand beside a citizen of New York as the four men who have made the modern loom. Jacquard's invention appears likely to last. indefinitely. Certainly it has not yet been improved upon. Kay's invention may disappear, perhaps forever, before the new positive-motion shuttle of James Lyall. To understand this invention it must be observed that when by the movement of the machine the warp threads are drawn apart

to form the shed, the flying shuttle is thrown forcibly through the loom. This is both uncertain and dangerous, yet it has answered very well up to a certain width. There is a limit to the throw of the shuttle, and this fixes absolutely the width of the woven fabric. If, now, the shuttle instead of skimming over half the threads and under the other half, could ride between them on a carriage, the width of the loom and the fabric could be very greatly increased.

At first glance it would seem impossible that any, save a flying shuttle, could be used in a loom. The two groups of warp threads that form the shed are continually changing. If the shuttle were arranged to roll through it must pass over the lower group of yarns and would at once throw them all into confusion and render weaving impossible. Mr. Lyall's invention overcomes this difficulty in a most ingenious manner.

The accompanying cut represents a side elevation of Mr. Lyall's shuttle and carriage. The carriage O, moves on the track . On this carriage

rests the shuttle supported on the wheels 4, that rest on the upper carriage wheels 3, that in turn rest on wheels 2. At either end of the carriage are the cords u, by which it is drawn to and fro through the loom. It will be seen there is a space between the shuttle and its carriage. It is through this space that the yarns forming the lower part of the shed pass. They are at right angles with the shuttle and are not shown in the figure. It will be seen that the carriage travels under the threads and the shuttle over them, and that the only point of contact between them is at the wheels 3 and 4. Only one thread can be affected at a time by each pair of wheels, and as this is a rolling motion and lasting only for an instant the thread is undisturbed by the flight of the apparatus, however rapid it may be. It has been suggested the shuttle is like the circus rider leaping over the ribbons, the momentum of the horse carrying him forward even while quite free from his back.

The wonder of this thing is its simplicity. Other parts of the loom have been improved by Lyall and by other American inventors, yet this rolling shuttle clearly marks the most striking improvement ever made to